


Home Is Not A Place

by icarus_chained



Category: Midnight Texas (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Possession, Awkward Conversations, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Related, Exhaustion, Families of Choice, Friendly Kidnapping, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Promises, Protectiveness, Spoilers, episode s02e01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-16 17:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16499264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: Post-Head Games. In the aftermath of the aftermath of Colconnar, Manfred is fraying badly, and too sure he's lost the town's trust to do much about it. Olivia finally gets fed up, and somewhat forcibly gets him to talk to her about it.





	Home Is Not A Place

**Author's Note:**

> I saw S02E01 of this show last week. Then promptly went back and watched the whole of season 1 in one big burst. I don't know how long it's going to last, but I really, _really_ like it. Found family is such a huge thing for me.

Midnight was a little bit quieter these days. Even with the new people at the hotel. Even after dark. Somehow, though, Olivia doubted that she and Lem were the only ones who took the occasional after-hours stroll just to make sure that was still the case.

A little bit of an apocalypse would do that to a person. Even people like them.

And speaking of people like them. Olivia drifted to a casual halt, the movement slow and natural enough not to catch anyone’s eye. She was good at not startling her prey. One of those hard lessons you didn’t forget all that easy. She leaned back against the wall behind her, and crossed her arms as she watched the figure moving across the street.

Lem ghosted up to her less than a minute later. Sensing something in their connection. Something … dark. A little bloody. Her emotions were a little less volatile these days, but she was still herself, and always would be.

And she had _never_ , in all her life, been all that fond of idiocy.

“Ah,” he said, his face stilling into carefully moulded calm as he watched Manfred shuffle down off his porch, still in his boxers, and clamber clumsily into his RV instead. Leaving behind his sanctuary against the dead, and probably only hope of sleep, and climbing back inside the familiar comfort of his old home, and primary means of escape. ‘Ah’, Lem said. Yeah. _Ah_.

She felt Lem’s fingers skim lightly across her arm. Not a restraint, or even really a reassurance. Just an acknowledgement, maybe. Just a sign that he knew what she intended, and always had her back.

“I’ll take it you’ll be busy for the rest of tonight,” he murmured, his breath tickling her ear lightly. “Shall I wait up for you?”

No judgement. No expectation. Olivia turned into his chest, her teeth brightly bared in her smile, and leaned up to take his lips, one hand curling around his neck, the other fisted in his shirt. She felt his arms close around her, fierce, impossible strength, and only grinned the harder, bright and vicious into their kiss. He exhaled raggedly as they parted, a flare of something wild and savage in his eyes too. In his eyes, in his chest. She could feel it. Not their bond. This part she had always felt.

“Don’t bother,” she said, all her emotions thrumming in her veins, bright-dark, not a drop of them leeched away. “I’ve got to take a man on a little bit of a trip. Might take a few hours, depending on how cooperative he turns out to be. Don’t worry. We’ll be back by tomorrow night.”

His lips curled, wry and rueful. “Try to leave him in one piece, hmm? Fiji’s been trying to fix him up a little. She might be annoyed if you upset that.”

A soft, diffident suggestion. Olivia smiled too. Hers was far from soft, or rueful.

“Like I said,” she repeated, light and easy and full of teeth. “Depends on how cooperative he feels like being.”

***

The assailant came at him from behind. Grabbed him by the neck as he was climbing out of the RV. Manfred would freely admit that his reflexes weren’t the best right now, or his attention to his surroundings either, but somehow he doubted it would have made all that much difference in this case. An arm wrapped itself around his neck, the sudden pressure on his throat and his airway overriding all thought and drawing his own arms up to his neck, and he felt the prongs touch off his ribs a split second after he realised that was the wrong thing to do.

The pain hit a second later. Thankfully, by this stage, he was so worn out that it didn’t last all that long before blackness swam up and claimed him. Small mercies, he thought nonsensically, as his body hit the floor somewhere very far away. 

Gotta be grateful for small mercies, huh?

***

He woke up tied to a chair. Of course he did. You’d think he’d be getting the hang of these things by now. This was practically a regular occurrence since coming to Midnight. They should start advertising it in brochures.

“You know you should sleep more,” a flat, unimpressed voice spoke up from one side, and Manfred’s head jerked up without his leave. He hissed, squinting in a combination of pain and sunlight as Olivia walked around in front of him, glaring down at him with a distinctly unhappy expression on her face. “I figured you’d be out for an hour or two, not nearly twelve. Does Fiji know you’re this bad?”

Manfred stared dumbly at her. He’d … He’d say something, but …

“Did you kidnap me?” he finally managed. Hoarsely. His throat felt like someone had taken barbed wire to it. Hopefully not literally. He was nearly, _nearly_ sure Olivia wouldn’t go that far. Not to all-out torture. A little assault and kidnapping was one thing, but … “Did you kidnap me _again_?”

Olivia snorted, dragging across another chair to settle down in front of him. They were in … a motel room? He thought? Not one that had been _used_ any time in the last twenty years, judging by the layer of dust on the hideously orange bedspread, but it had all the hallmarks. He’d been in a motel room or ten thousand over the years. He’d know.

“I seem to recall you taking me on a wild goose chase out into the desert recently,” she noted. Mildly enough. “Little bit of hitting me over the head and dropping me in an unmarked grave. Not your fault, I know, but maybe I felt like evening the score.”

Manfred flinched. Bile rose in his throat. Not the black stuff. Too thin for that. He could swallow this one back down. It might’ve added a little bit of acid to his tone, though.

“Pretty sure this is the second or third time I’ve wound up tied to one of your chairs,” he pointed out, and wondered briefly if the snarl in it was all his, or an echo of something else.

Either way, Olivia didn’t seem that worried.

“All right,” she agreed easily, leaning forward with far too bright a smile. Manfred felt like the sunlight was reflecting off her teeth. “So maybe I felt like evening the score in my favour again. It’s a professional pride thing. Demons aside, some skinny, underfed psychic lures me out of town and knocks me out, I’m gonna feel a little bit annoyed about that.”

Manfred swallowed. His wrists twisted behind his back. His hands were done with tape this time, not rope or chains. Maybe he had a chance of getting out of it. Probably not in _time_ , but—

“Relax,” Olivia said. Gently, all of a sudden. Catching the whisper of real fear on his face. She leaned towards him, and the toothy smile was gone, her expression hard and serious instead. Her hand was gentle, though. She touched him lightly on the knee. It didn’t hurt. “Relax, Manfred. Much as I’d like to slap you around the head some more, that’s not why we’re here. I’m not gonna hurt you. I brought you out here so we could talk.”

Manfred … laughed. Sort of. A hard burst of noise between his teeth. His throat hurt, and his ribs ached, and his head was pounding like hell. He stared at her in disbelief.

Olivia stared right back. Her expression was as hard and cold and completely, entirely serious as he’d ever seen it, and gradually Manfred felt even the black humour draining away from him. She wasn’t joking. He could see she wasn’t joking. Suddenly all he felt was tired.

“You couldn’t have just taken me out for a coffee, I suppose?” he asked softly, tipping his head back against the chair and closing his eyes. He could still hear her shaking her head.

“If soft worked, Fiji would have gotten through to you by now,” she said bluntly. “If we thought taking you out for a coffee would help, it wouldn’t be me you’d be talking to.”

He laughed again. Feeling the bile climb back up his throat. It was that or cry.

Olivia watched him for a long second. He could feel it. He could feel her eyes on his chest. His face. If he opened his own again, she’d be looking right at him, he knew. He kept them closed. He didn’t say anything. After a minute, Olivia said it for him.

“You think we don’t trust you.” Her voice was flat and quiet and calm. “You think you don’t deserve to be trusted. You think one day soon we’re gonna see the light and kick you out so you can’t hurt us anymore. You think maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. You’re afraid. You’re afraid something’s going to crawl inside you again and make you hurt someone you love. Or just hurt you. ‘Cause that’s happened a lot lately, hasn’t it. People hurting you. You think maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if you just ran away and let that stop. The job’s done. Creek’s gone. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt anybody if you just … got in your van and left. Again.”

Her voice got a little bit pointed on the end there. That last word. Something twisted in Manfred’s chest, a spark of something that might almost have been temper, but it wasn’t important. Wasn’t anywhere close to the important thing. He kept his mouth shut, and focused on keeping his breathing steady. Kept his eyes shut, and focused on not letting anything leak out of them. He was getting really tired of being weak. Of getting hurt, of letting … letting things …

“I don’t blame you for that, you know,” Olivia went on. _Very_ softly, now. Quiet, like she was afraid someone else was gonna hear it. Manfred twitched, and nearly opened his eyes. Her hand gripped his knee gently. “You’re not the only one who knows how to bug out when the going gets tough. Used to be a real specialty of mine too. If you get in your van tomorrow, I’m not gonna blame you for it. I didn’t blame Creek. I don’t think you did either.”

His breath punched out of him. He couldn’t help it. Couldn’t keep it in. No, he didn’t blame Creek. God, did he ever not blame her. How many lies can you handle? How many times can your boyfriend almost get you killed before you wise up? Oh, he didn’t blame her. He didn’t blame her at all.

He had a habit of making people’s lives worse when he stepped into them. Look at Violet. Look at Creek. About the only woman he hadn’t directly gotten killed was Xylda, and he hadn’t exactly taken that plate of pills away from her either. Getting out, getting away from him, was the smart thing to do. He couldn’t fault Creek for finally seeing that. 

He wouldn’t fault anyone else either.

“… Yeah,” he rasped hoarsely, when he could manage it again. He felt a smile twisting his face. Something sort of like a smile, anyway. “I can bug out anytime. I can do that for you. No problem.”

The hand on his knee tightened. A _lot_. Nails dug into the skin around his kneecap, and Manfred opened his eyes with a startled hiss. Olivia glared at him. She looked at him fit to kill.

“You are _such_ an idiot,” she growled, standing so abruptly her chair tipped over with a bang behind her. Manfred flinched, entirely involuntarily, and Olivia growled _more_. She loomed over him, her posture speaking to a very primal part of his brain, and Manfred leaned back so far he could feel the chair back trying to push his shoulder blades out through his collarbone. He half expected to see a knuckleduster appear in her hand. When she leaned in, he wasn’t entirely sure it was a relief when one didn’t.

“I said I wouldn’t blame you for bailing,” she growled, one hand curling like she wanted to grab him with it. If he’d been wearing a shirt, he suspected she would have. “I _didn’t_ say I wanted you gone. And you have _no_ idea how close I am to knocking your head off right now. If Fiji wouldn’t kill me, we’d be on the way down to Bianca Canyon _yesterday_.”

She glared furiously down at him, like she was waiting for him to say something, but honestly Manfred was a little too busy trying to convince his lizard brain that peeing his boxers would be undignified and unlikely to improve the situation. He blinked wordlessly at her, and after a second she backed off with another growl of disgust.

“All right,” she said, pacing back and forth a little bit. “All right. I’m going to say some things, okay, and you’re going to listen. You are _not_ going to repeat them, you’re not going to mention them to anyone else, and you are not going to say anything until I’m done. Okay?” He opened his mouth, and she nailed him with a look. “That wasn’t actually a question. Shut up and pay attention.”

Sensibly, Manfred closed his mouth again. Maybe he _was_ starting to get the hang of these little chair-bound interrogations after all. Had to happen sometime. Olivia glared warningly at him for a little bit longer. Then she sighed, and put her chair back on its feet to sit down again.  
“I’m gonna keep this short,” she said, with an odd note in her voice. Like she’d meant to say it flatly, but something slipped in. “I don’t blame you for what happened. I’m not going to hold it against you that you got hyped up on demon goo and tried to kill me.” He opened his mouth, and she ploughed straight over him without stopping. “And the _reason_ I’m not going to hold that against you is because I trust you. Manfred Bernardo. Lackwit psychic. I do trust you.”

… Distantly, Manfred felt his mouth click closed. Whatever he’d thought about trying to say vanished at that. Poof. Just like that. He stared at her, mind as empty as the day he was born. Olivia stared grimly, mulishly back.

“I don’t mean all the way,” she clarified after a moment. Carefully. Looking away, looking out the motel window. “I don’t trust you not to keep secrets, or to tell people what they need to know. I don’t trust you not to bug out someday and never look back. But I _do_ … I do trust you to stand by me while we’re here. I do trust you to have my back, to have Lem’s back. I trust you to fight for us, to get hurt for us, even to get killed for us if it comes to it. I trust you enough to know that if you ever do hurt us, it’s not because you wanted to.”

Manfred had … he had no response to that. None whatsoever. He could feel the chair digging into his shoulder blades. He could hear the lingering echoes of demonic voices fading in his ears. He was cold. Not just from sitting in his boxers. He was cold all the way down to the bone.

But he wasn’t scared. For the first time in quite a long time. He wasn’t scared.

“Fiji told you this, you dipshit,” Olivia said quietly. Almost viciously. “You got hyped up on demon goo because you let six demons ride you so Fiji wouldn’t get raped to death by one. You _died_ , actually died, to try and get answers for us. There were consequences to that, and now they’re dealt with, and it’s fine. It’s done. The next time you get poisoned by demon gunk, you’re gonna tell us in advance, so nobody winds up in an unmarked grave. After that, you and me? We’re good. We’re fine. Nobody let anybody down, and nobody has to go anywhere. Okay?”

He nodded. He had the sense to nod. It wasn’t … out of agreement, completely, but he wasn’t going to argue with her either. Not least because there was a lump in his throat, and he wasn’t a hundred percent sure how well he could talk right now. Didn’t matter anyway. She wasn’t finished.

She leaned forward. Not like before. Not looming. She just leaned close.

“You can leave if you want to,” she said, something odd and maybe a little guilty in her face. “Like I said, I’m not going to hold that against you. Not everyone can handle a place like Midnight for long, and it’s not because they’re weak either. It’s hard here. There’s been times I thought about leaving too. Not even that long ago. There’ve been times when I was so damn sure I had to go. Every time I try there’s a reason to come back. Lem, mostly. Always Lem. But Creek’s gone now. Maybe you think you don’t have that anymore. Maybe without her the rest of us just aren’t enough.”

“It’s not—” Manfred started, before he’d really thought about it. His face twisted, and his arms pulled as he tried briefly to sit up properly. He didn’t make it, and subsided back again. She watched him curiously. “It’s not that you’re not enough. I—”

“I know,” she cut him off. Almost gently. As gentle as Olivia got, anyway. “Shut up, you idiot. You came riding back to town in a dump truck full of corpses to help us. Creek was never the only one you fell all over yourself trying to help. I still owe you for Lem. And Fiji. And hell, all of Midnight. Not going to pay those back any time soon. I’m just saying it’s okay if you want to leave. If you want two minutes without having to find a killer, or get hijacked by a demon, or fight a rogue angel. It’s been a rough couple of months. It’s okay if you need a break.”

She meant it. He’d swear to god she meant it. That nearly made it worse. His first instinct for _so many years_ had been to run, and as soon as someone said it was okay that made it worse. He didn’t know what it was about Midnight. He tried to run once before. He’d come back because of Creek. Or he _thought_ he’d come back because of Creek. But Creek was gone now, and he still …

“… I don’t want to go,” he whispered raggedly. Closing his eyes, some vague instinct towards self-protection. “I don’t want to leave. Without Xylda, the RV … Home is a person. It always was. I told Creek it was her, now, but she … It’s not the same, but I don’t want to leave. Not sure why.”

There was silence for a second. While Olivia thought about that. Manfred, stripped raw, sitting naked in more ways than one, didn’t try to interrupt it. He tipped his head back and stared at the red-tinged backs of his eyelids.

“Maybe,” she said finally. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be just one person. Maybe it can be a few of them. Like a town.” She touched his knee again, nudged it lightly, and he opened his eyes to look at her. To look at her crooked, rueful smile. “I’m not the one to ask about this, you understand. I figured I was doing good to just get Lem, and I didn’t plan on that lasting too long either. I’m not the sort of person people stick around for. But like I said. Every time I tried to leave, there was always a reason to come back. It’s not just Lem. Not anymore. He’s not the only person in this town I’d get hurt for either.”

Manfred swallowed heavily. He put on a smile, tried a smile. It was that or cry some more. “Is it—” he started. “Is it too much to ask that nobody gets hurt at all?”

Olivia snorted softly. Grinned her crooked grin. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m pretty sure it is. We live in a town of weird shit. Pretty sure there’s always somebody gonna be getting hurt.”

And, well. He couldn’t argue with her there.

Her face changed, though. Right there. He was looking at her, and her face changed. Something different. Something he hadn’t seen before. Something soft, and bloody, and fearsome. Something he would have thought she’d save for someone like Lem.

“It doesn’t have to be for me, though,” she said, very quietly, and Manfred blinked at her. Frozen, caught by the edge of something old and horrible in her tone. “People getting hurt. I don’t need it to be for me. If someone has a choice between letting me fight my own battles and getting themselves hurt. If they have a choice between letting me go down fighting and letting something crawl inside their skin and make them hurt. I didn’t get into this game to be safe. I won’t ever ask anyone to sell themselves for me. They can make that choice with a clean conscience. I’m not that sort of person.”

And there was something … there was something _terrible_ there. Some old, vicious secret. About people selling themselves. About people getting sold. Manfred didn’t need to be a psychic to hear it. He didn’t need his abilities to smell old blood and taste old sin. Olivia’s face was carved out of stone, cold and rigid over some gaping wound, and more than any other time in this conversation he wished his hands weren’t tied behind his back. He tried to lean forward. He wished he could touch her hand.

“You don’t have to ask,” he said. Distantly, trying to push emotion into it. Trying to push something more than his own cold, hollow shock. “It wouldn’t be asking. Olivia, you … You can’t think people in this town are just gonna _let_ … Not you. Not any of us. Not you.”

She smiled at him. Something soft and twisted and sad. Like she’d won. “Not any of us,” she said, feeding his words back to him. “Yeah. People in this town won’t let anything happen. Not to any of us. Not to _you_.”

… He wished he had better control of his expression. He wished he had a way to make it less … less open. Less _raw_. Maybe it didn’t matter, though. Maybe she’d have seen through it anyway. Her smile didn’t get any less crooked.

“Don’t worry,” she said quietly. “I’m more the sort to hurt other people than let myself get hurt. I’m not going to be going down without a fight. And these days, neither is anyone else. But this is a two-way thing, Manfred. We faced a demon together. We pitched in and punched the bastard back to hell. You most of all. That’s good enough. You wanna trade off, you want to let someone else take the hits for a while, that’s good enough. You’re one of us. We can do that for you.”

Manfred shook his head. Tried to pull out his hands, tried to wave it off. “I’m not … I’m not looking for that. I’m not trying to pawn this off. I’m just … I’m just _tired_ , that’s all. I don’t need anyone to get hurt. I just need to sleep for a while, just—”

She stood up. Cut him off. She took his face between her palms. Gently. He shut up.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Yeah, you do. Pretty sure I told you that. Pretty sure _Fiji_ told you that. You do need to sleep. You need to rest and get yourself back together. And you can _do_ that. You can lie down, and go to sleep, and no one can touch you without losing a hand for trying. You’re not on your own anymore. You’re in Midnight, Manny. We’ve got your back.”

And there was … there was only one answer to that, wasn’t there? There was only one thing he could say, with her hands warm and gentle at his temples, after he’d tried to kill her. To kill all of them. There was only one answer.

It was one he figured Xylda would be proud of, too.

“I won’t leave,” he promised quietly. “I won’t run. I won’t let any of you get hurt.”

Olivia snorted softly. She brushed her thumbs across his temples. Wiped away any lingering dampness. “You can if you need to,” she said, stepping back and moving around behind him. Moving to cut the tape around his wrists. “You can take a break if you need one. Don’t worry about it. And don’t worry about hurting us, either. Next time you start going funny, I’m gonna knock you over the head and put you in a hole somewhere safe. I’ll get Lem to help me. You got lucky this one time. You try to put me in a grave again, I’ll knock the demons out of your skull the old-fashioned way.”

Manfred hunched forward with a groan, tucking his freed wrists in against his chest and rubbing them gingerly. God, he ached all over. Not just from her tender ministrations, either. He hadn’t slept in a while. His body hadn’t been happy with him in weeks.

“I believe you,” he said wryly. Looking up at her, the kind of tired and rueful you got after one too many chair-bound interrogations. “Trust me, Olivia. I really, _really_ do.”

She beamed at him. A bright, sunshiny smile full of teeth. There were times he had to wonder if Lem was really the vampire in their relationship.

“Good,” she said, tugging him gently to his feet. “Now. Let’s get you back to town before anyone thinks I really have murdered you, hmm?”

Because they’d be upset if she had. Even if it was Olivia. They’d be upset if someone killed him, even if it was for the best reasons in the world. Manfred swallowed thickly again. He swallowed around something in his chest that had just been for Xylda, before. That had just been for the clink of cheap plastic jewellery, and the smell of pipe smoke, and the familiar closeness of a house on wheels.

Home wasn’t a place. Home was never a place. Home was a person.

Or, sometimes, people.

“… Next time, you know,” he tried carefully. “Next time, you can just take me for a coffee. I promise I’ll listen anyway. Or I’ll try to, at least. Honest. Psychic’s honour.”

Olivia paused, her hand on his arm, and _looked_ at him for a long second. Looked right through him, the sort of intense, predatory gaze that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the Rev’s furred, full-moon face. Human she might be, but there was no doubt at all that Olivia Charity did belong in Midnight. There was no question why she’d managed to make her home there. She fit in better than he did.

Though maybe these days he didn’t fit so badly either.

“Sure,” she said eventually. “We’re about even now on the kidnapping score. Okay. Next time we do coffee.”

He snorted. “Even in your favour. Yeah. But I’ll take what I can get.”

She grinned, and leaned in to pat him gently on the shoulder. “I always knew you were a smart man,” she said. “You’re okay, Bernardo. I always knew you were smart.”

And for someone who looked absolutely nothing like her, for a second he swore she sounded just like Xylda.


End file.
